“…concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.
(Excerpted quote from Eric Francis’ article in the series on Auschwitz called “The Big Lie.”)
“We need to know the full extent of Senator Obama’s relationship with ACORN, who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.“
(Republican Presidential nominee Senator John McCain at the third and final Presidential debate, October 15, 2008)
“George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights,” … “Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama.”
(Georgia Congressman John Lewis, civil rights veteran, on the hate-speechВ at the McCain campaign rallies.)
Dear Friend and Reader:
WE BEGIN THIS EXORCISM with a prayer for four little girls in Alabama, for Matthew Shepard, for James Byrd, for theВ 16 children killed in the daycare centerВ of theВ Alfred P. MurrahВ Federal Building blown up by domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City in 1995В and for everyone who has everВ directly confrontedВ a torch, a gun, a bomb or an epithetВ in the name of unthinking hatred and fear.
In Wikipedia, a scapegoat is defined as someone “who is blamed for misfortunes, generally as a way of distracting attention from the real causes”. For some, those real causes can range from isolation and loneliness to outright terror of the natural and inevitable changes that life brings — in one’s personal life,В in your community, culture, religion orВ world.
Real causes can also include one’s own guilt and remorse projected onto someone else, making them, not you, everyone’s focus. In some cases the distraction deals with the ineptitude and rootlessness of one’s campaign. In all cases, it seems all too easy to project fear onto “the Other.”
At the end of Mercury Unbottled – Part 1, I wrote: “He (McCain) is now like liquid mercury unbottled. Once spilled, hard to contain, even harder to keep a finger on and lethal to swallow. But at that point, when cornered as he is, a political animal becomes all the more dangerous.”
Since the debate, the campaign of Senator John McCain the political animal has become dangerous. ScapegoatingВ is occuring at a rhythmic pace. Remember Casey’s words from “A Coup on the Mind“? They lie. Rinse.В Repeat.
Given the media (primarily Fox News) and Republican party onslaught, the rhythm has become a symphony of distrust, accusation, guilt by association and plain old lying and exaggeration about ACORN, Obama’s distant association with former domestic terrorist William Ayers’, and claims that Obama is an Arab. He’s a Muslim. He’s a terrorist. And then of course there are those vote-stealing satanic Democrats.
It would be comical if we weren’t living in a country already obsessed with fear of “the Other.” Being an “other,” I am alarmed by the tone of McCain’s campaignВ and the entire Republican party’s effort to discredit what some of the founding fathers — at least the non-slave holding ones — would have rejoiced in.В A fully participatory democracy with the gates open for all to participate.
Pointing fingers at voting “irregularities,” one is reminded of the long lines that happened in 2004 in Ohio where black precincts had two working voting machines while white precincts had dozens. Bush won Ohio by a margin that I believe still raises doubt as to its validity, though Kerry did not contest it. In 2008, pointing fingers at “irregularities” leads to violence, as ACORN workers are getting death threats while doing their job, which is registering minorities and low-income residents to vote.
In the last two weeks of an election, the campaign focus is on: 1) rallying the base; 2) picking up undecideds; 3) making sure your base gets to the polls. If the message is an indicator, then the Republicans are counting on Joe the Racist and Jane the Frightened to get up and out to the polls.
By using dog-whistling – signals toВ only those who can hear it, they’re triggeringВ use of the race card for those who use race as a deciding factor. By the way, racism occurs on all sides of the color spectrum, so people of color and even some blacks are going to tow that line. Please ask me later about some African-Americans I’ve metВ who think “McCain LOOKS like a President”.В
As we watch Mercury unfurl itself back to its original degree before going retrograde last month, we’re witnessing the sound and the fury of the stuff deep inside that scares us. The stuff that all the political correctness of the last two decadesВ could not teach out of us.В These areВ deep and painful,В hurtful things that we don’t want to face in ourselves, let alone say their name.
But as IВ was reminded in Al Giordano’s gorgeous post Monday inВ “The Field”, he quoted Lenny Bruce’s line: “it is the suppression of the word that gives it its power.”В Ironically, thisВ release of poisonВ isВ occuringВ near the season of Scorpio, the sign of death and regeneration,В and with a hat tip to Paul Simon: itsВ “hello darkness, [our] old friend.”
Making peace with our demons of racism, our xenophobia and distrust of others outside our “normal” sphere was never going to be easy. Even if Obama is elected, we will still be contending with it. But when you expose the full extent of the wound that’s deep to the bone in this country, you have a chance, I repeat: chance, to heal it.
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Elsheba Khan at the grave of her son, Specialist Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan.
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Watching Colin Powell’s endorsement of Obama yesterday on “Meet the Press,” I was moved to tears. For all that’s been said about Powell — and yes, I’m still furious that he sold the Iraq war to the UN — yesterday I saw a black man, a Republican, a conservative with a tremendous amount of credibility amongst American Republicans raise the level of campaign discourse and bring home a point about the cost of fear, and those who sacrifice everything to fight it.
“I’m also troubled by – not what Senator McCain says – but what members of the Party say, and it is permitted to be said: such things as, “Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.” Well, the correct answer is he is not a Muslim. He’s a Christian; has always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, ‘What if he is?В Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?’ The answer’s “No, that’s not America…”
I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo essay about troops who were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay was of a mother in Arlington Cemetery. And she had her head on the headstone of her son’s grave.В And as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone. And it gave his awards – Purple Heart, Bronze Star; showed that he died in Iraq; gave his date of birth, date of death. He was twenty years old.
And then at the very top of the headstone, it didn’t have a Christian cross. It didn’t have a Star of David. It had a crescent and a star of the Islamic faith. And his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Kahn. And he was an American. He was born in New Jersey, he was fourteen-years-old at the time of 9/11 and he waited until he could go serve his country and he gave his life.”
I end this exorcism with a prayer for all of us still unwilling to be moved. Let the poison out. Release it. Let it spill and free yourself of it, and while doing so, do no harm. Let this be our season to free ourselves.
Yours & truly,
Fe Bongolan in San Francisco
Mystes, it sounds like an orgasm. Maybe you are thinking too hard, no pun intended.
A lady I worked with once told me that she would have an orgasm several times a day by thinking about it and then kinda like squeeze her diaphram area and sigh with relief. From that point forward, if i caught her sighing and breathing out with relief-like, i had to ask her if I was interrupting something. LOL.
Thought some levity was needed.
Seems to me like I see auras when i look about 30 degrees off center and go out of focus. Well I’ll think about it too.
Also, about 30 degrees off the head of a person is where I sometimes see the flickering spirit lights that follow some people. Maybe the blind spot is the opening to the other dimension.
“Hope you check in the upstairs thread on Code Pink. I started a question in the discussion thread that I hope we can all pile on.
xxx, Fe”
Y’asm. Will continue from there in a while (ponderponder)…
(what, no hugs? (0)x(0))
“Each of our unique psychic structure is arrayed around a particular interpretation of that вЂ?hole.’ But I’m going to keep thinking about this (this=the relationship between the physical fact of that вЂ?crossing’ and how it moves into character or morality) for a while longer today.
It’s a good question.”
mystes:
This thread of discussion is, I believe, going to be more more critical as time goes on, particularly in light of the Uranus-Saturn opposition. What haven’t we been attentive to the last decade and a half? What are the symptoms of the blindness? Have these symptoms metasticized in behaviors, tics, obsessions and destructive habits and beliefs?
Hope you check in the upstairs thread on Code Pink. I started a question in the discussion thread that I hope we can all pile on.
xxx, Fe
Oh Gardening One: This… ” We’ve all seen people like that. Is that the type of stain you are talking about? It really does seem to be a mindset.”
Let me think on this a while. The scotoma -blindspot- that appears in the visual field about 30 degrees off of visual center. It is the result of the optical nerves crossing and cancelling each other’s predominance in binocular vision. (It is quite possible that one-eyed people don’t have it!) The ‘stain’ could be considered the moral equivalent of this perceptual ‘hole.’
Each of our unique psychic structure is arrayed around a particular interpretation of that ‘hole.’ But I’m going to keep thinking about this (this=the relationship between the physical fact of that ‘crossing’ and how it moves into character or morality) for a while longer today.
It’s a good question.
Love,
M
Hmm… yeah I’m gonna be visiting the ‘blindspot’ in that cupcake sometime soon. Great recipe!
Anchos (smoked poblano peppers) are Mexican in origin – dunno how Mayan. Maybe. Colombians have a rather tame cuisine, except for the bits they borrow from the Caribe.
***
I was just struck by the purity/danger discussion; and I do agree with astrodem that we lefties do have our food foibles – its where we express a lot of our religious awe. My kid is a prime example: anarcho-socialist-vegetarian. Became a vegetarian on his own at age 9, and argues vehemently for its superiority.
My response: I eat as I am eaten. And we are all being eaten, every day.
Off to season the dish.
M
To Maya Mystes:
http://www.accordingtolayla.com/pdfs/wk37anchocupcakes.pdf
Ancho Chile cupcake recipe – might be Columbian, and sensuous too. LOL.
Maya Mystes,
Oh, righteous indignation never was a bad thing. It is hate that is wrong, and expecting the worst comes from fear – and fear is, well…evil.
They weren’t yelling – they were simply stating an observed fact – that I was expecting the boys to be doing something very bad, and they were! But yeah, they were upset. The thing is, did I make it happen? Did I know it would happen, or did I project my fear so intensely, that I made it happen? We don’t see them anymore. I have thought about the lady who got mad recently, and wondered if I should try to look her up. Something might be going on with her.
I read an interesting thing about Oprah Winfrey’s attitude about success, and that was that if God doesn’t give you anymore pain than you can handle, what about money? Does He keep people poor, or not? Oprah always expected to have abundance.
A boss described it once, of someone at my work. “She has a cloud over her that says “‘Hit me.”” We’ve all seen people like that. Is that the type of stain you are talking about? It really does seem to be a mindset.
Gardener-heart. . . People get mad. For some bizarre reason I am perfectly okay with that, consider it a strange form of admiration. Think about it: the senses get really, really … for want of a better word … ‘tumescent’ during anger, the environment takes on an almost unbearable presence, time and space collapse into one another. Where there’s heat, there’s often light.
Our genial (and sparky) host touched on this when he raised a salute to ‘anger without guilt.’ So while I understand how much it rocks the boat (and one’s world) to have guests actually yelling at you, my view is that when people have a LOT to say to one another, too much to fit into the usual constraints of social discourse, they’ll sometimes trigger anger to get a big ol’ energy exchange going. Fast.
And it generally works. It helps to know that anger is just mirrorlike awareness, slightly cockeyed.
Like love, you just have to let it go where it wants to go. 90% of the time it takes you somewhere not on the maps.
Do you still talk to the Indian couple?
***
As for the Colombians. . . sigh. That little hotspot is the outcome of a social body ravaged by profound jealousy of Europe and the US, a rapid, overdeveloped haute bourgoiesie, and hatred of the working class (and its sexuality), all inflated by a Catholicism that controlled every aspect of the social body, all the way down to voting correctly or facing eternal damnation.
Social attitudes have run the gamut there. Bogota had a gorgeous mayor a few years ago who hired mimes to walk the city streets and mock criminals during their crimes. He was brilliant, but resigned shortly after Ingrid B’s kidnapping. They have plenty of amazing people, but the stranglehold comes from a different level.
Things are moving along though.
Fe: You know that scotoma occurs where the optical nerves cross. Cross. Cross. See that word again: Cross. The blank is also called a ‘tache’ or stain. This notion should be taken out and fingered from time to time. Stain vs. purity. The stain turns up where the blind spot can’t be seen.
It isn’t just a matter of projection, it is something else we can work with. Getting down into the blind spot is a matter of profound (the most profound) sensuality.
It’s why EF has that starstruck look. He’s looking into the Spot.
***
**
*
Hi Guru Mystes,
Most of us can’t quite manage the parasites, let alone the midbrain. When left to free will, we fail because the vortex makes up another scenario to stop the inner man’s wisdom. History repeats itself continually, yet in the spirit world there is no such concept as time. It is why at age 82 we still feel the same as we did at age 18.
One time we had some indian friends in and the men were playing a drum and singing native songs. The kids were in the front yard and I had a real conviction that they were up to no good and I said so. I knew something was wrong. A bit later a man stopped and said the kids threw a rock at his wife’s car and broke out the window. The indian women got mad at me! They said I WAS THE ONE that made it happen!
Anyway it turned out that the man’s wife was indian too, so they were happy they found out there were other indians in the area, as they were new here and didn’t know anyone. The kids apologized and we paid for the car repairs.
Well I never stopped thinking about those women getting mad at me for causing the accident! It happened about 20 years ago.
Those people in Columbia are expecting the worse when they should be thinking abundantly and joyfully. But like you said, easy to do? No. It takes a huge leap of faith. I think about that when watching those kung fu rascals knock people down with their thoughts.
Gnostic Gardener: “And after all, the first lesson of the Course in Miracles is, You Are Not A Body. ”
Gardener, honey… that’s the thing, what does one mean by ‘body’? If I were to write something like the Course, I’d perhaps ‘ve put “You are not ONLY a Body.” Which may only compound the confusion, but it’s a step beyond the mody/bind dualism.
Bodies are constructed at various crossroads. The crossroad of ignorance and perfected wisdom to begin with; then the crossroad of angerXmirror-awareness and cravingXdiscrimination. That triad ignorance/anger/craving forms a kind of vortex, but it *feeds* off of wisdom/awareness/discrimination.
When Ah rattle off those remedies ‘manage the midbrain’ ‘find and communicate the switch’ ‘disempower the parasites’ it sounds facile, but I don’t for a minute think its easy. Fun, yes. Easy, not so much.
Fear has always been used by the dark forces of the physical world. Not everyone approves of the work, “Disappearance of the Universe,” but for me it explained everything. It matches my personal experiences with light episodes.
Once everyone lets go of fear, the physical world will no longer hold us. I don’t think we have to manage the para/sympathetic nervous system at all. Thought is deed in the spirit world. And after all, the first lesson of the Course in Miracles is, You Are Not A Body. when you experience the opening of the other dimension (and the love and warmth), you can’t think of this place as anything but a figment of imagination, a dark cold hell.
mystes:
A million thanks for giving me that fabulous word “scotoma”. There are books and articles and plays written and to write about blind spots. Ready now to look deep into that one.
My investigations into the Colombian Violencia (b. 1948 and still going) showed me that the status of ‘other’ may be precipitated by the usual socio-economic and cultural differences, but it is sealed by torture. De-humanization takes place through putting another person through so much physical agony that they literally lose their humanity. Misshapen features, violated bodies are then converted into the very image of malice.
In Colombia the bodies are dumped in public places as warning: so the populace is balanced on that knife edge: the tortured and discarded are no longer humans even worthy of pity. They just advertise the price of disobedience.
The curious thing is that this bridge between North and South (Panama was part of Colombia until Teddy gave ’em the nod to rebel) is the richest in so many resources, not least of which is oxygen. It could be such a garden, and it is instead, a cadaver-factory. What a set-up!
We think we’re badass here, but I consider that country the ‘scotoma’ – the blindspot on this side of the globe — where the root fear directory is programmed and unleashed. I’ve spent many years watching its machinations, and my crazy solution is the game:set crazy for this match: figure out how to manage the para/sympathetic nervous system, teach others how to flip the pain/regeneration switches, and disempower the bastards from their most important weapon: fear.
But the doing of it is a lot more fun than it sounds.
Why, you’re working on it right now…
Gardener:
There’s a reason why the Roman Empire never really died and continues to this day. Divide and conquer is one of them.
Around 300 a.d., Constantine separated the Christians from the Jews, giving them pagan holidays so they wouldn’t celebrate the Jewish holy days. That must be the beginning of the big lie? If not for Constantine, most Christians would still be Jewish.
My point is, you never know about people. If you were to judge me only by looks, you’d think I was “The Other,” when in fact we are “tribe,” as far as I am concerned. Many people where I live are quite surprised and not overly bothered when I reveal my “Otherness” to them, though I don’t tell many people I’m pagan–that’s enough to put my pets in physical danger.
gaelfire:
I’m coming to the conclusion that we need to categorize each other to keep ourselves from thinking more deeply about how connected we are by the history, somewhat bloody and awful, that we share.
My own culture is rife with mestizo-worship, which places class by shades of brown to white, the lighter being the more superior. What it sounds like from your family portrait is a backlash, an unfortunate one, but one still.
The original sin is still the colonization of our ancestors, and that colonization runs deep in our cells, separating our kin from us, using superior/inferior to divide blood ties. We are never too old or too young to understand one of the most compelling losses from history written by the victors is the gap in our identity.
My awareness of what Mexicans were being used for out in California kind of dovetailed with the first run of Eric’s Auschwitz series. Back then I was remembering how German scapegoating of European Jews was like a national paranoid schizophrenia. Jews were the reason they lost the Great War. Jews snatched up the wealth of Germany for themselves. Jews caused disease and ate German children.
Now what I’m thinking is, well, at first it was the Jews. Then it was all the Others.
Janes:
We’re living in a time where being a Mexican is sewing on the scarlet letter “A”. That is being used to keep Mexicans, all Mexicans here legally or not to walk the plank, when all they’re doing is provide the backbone to the state’s economy. They get picked on because if they speak out, they’re victim to reprisal–usually through the INS. Easy target.
No one talks about folks who buy houses in exurbs and expect the same kind of services for fire and police protection as the big cities, only they don’t want to pay the taxes for them. Or the state’s credit rating taking a hit because of poor investments which make state bonds higher risk with financial institutions. You can’t put these into soundbites that make sense to your average low-info voter.
But noun-verb-Mexican–that’s a piece of cake.
” My point is, you never know about people. If you were to judge me only by looks, you’d think I was “The Other,” when in fact we are “tribe,” as far as I am concerned. Many people where I live are quite surprised and not overly bothered when I reveal my “Otherness” to them, though I don’t tell many people I’m pagan–that’s enough to put my pets in physical danger.”
Interesting, isn’t it?
A friend of mine, graduate student, spent a fair amount of time at this Wolf Park last summer. She came back and told me about all this wolf stuff, how political they are, and how they’re always jockeying for the Alpha or the Beta positions; how they choose their mates according to their social standing. The guy who runs the place said that the pack thinks of him as the Double Alpha above the wolven pack leader.
One day all the wolves started treating him differently. They were testier. They’d challenge him. It was puzzling but he just made sure he was a little tougher and a little more careful. Then a couple weeks later he was diagnosed with cancer.
They could smell his weakness. They were planning for the fall.
My friend also told me about the Outcast of the pack. The Outcast was a female. She ate last and had no mate. Her coloring was slightly different from the rest, and that was all.
~j
” Now when our revenue projections hit something out of the ordinary, like lets say a credit crisis, you have the Governator with hat in hand to the fed asking for a $7B loan. That’s because housing revenues are projected lower and no one knows where the cash is coming from. They do not want to re-up property taxes (were you around for Prop 13?) — that’s a sacred cow, so the blame naturally goes to—Mexicans.”
Yeah, the thing about property taxes. This also has to do with Mexicans. Once I listened long enough I realized the whole thing was based on a very pure, precisely refined bigotry. No property tax increase because?
Anybody?
*They’d just be giving money to the Mexicans*
!
By year three out there I was so outraged by this I started revealing that I was half Mexican. I’m not, I’m an Irish Catholic but goddammit already.
The “cash shortfall” in the California budget is a smoke bomb in my opinion. I can’t believe the things that just slip out of the news these days. It’s like a science fiction story, something Vonnegut. In actuality burying news with lots of other news is a CIA tactic that this administration has used with suspicious expertise.
Enron was a colossal larceny. Colossal. Words fail. They rooked the state of California out of 30 *billion* dollars, stole its energy credits and *sold them on the East Coast* for triple the price. Energy credits? They were selling air. Ocean water. They were selling *nothing*. This is what that company did for a living! Enron, by the way, was the largest single corporate contributor to the George W Bush Presidential Campaign. Any politician who protected Enron had his pockets wide open; the crooked assholes who call themselves American Diplomats were trying to get India to fork over its fresh seedlings of new economy cash at the same time.
When I saw Enron go under, due to a “failure of corporate governance”, I got this kind of woozy feeling. Something is really fucking wrong here, you know? How did a multi-billion dollar dummy company, political slush fund and money laundering operation just bloom like that in the middle of Texas?
Anyway, all right, the thing is: What we’re looking at are crimes of titanic scope and ambition. Extortion, protection money, bailouts, ponzi schemes and plain old robbery on a massive scale. And eventually the big white manicured finger points at some brown people and says, there’s your problem. It’s the Mexicans. It’s terrorists. No wait, it’s *brown* terrorists. They’re the ones that took your money.
Of interest: Kenneth Lay ( recently conveniently dead of a heart attack) claimed that “short-sellers” destroyed Enron.
My awareness of what Mexicans were being used for out in California kind of dovetailed with the first run of Eric’s Auschwitz series. Back then I was remembering how German scapegoating of European Jews was like a national paranoid schizophrenia. Jews were the reason they lost the Great War. Jews snatched up the wealth of Germany for themselves. Jews caused disease and ate German children.
Now what I’m thinking is, well, at first it was the Jews. Then it was all the Others.
~j
As a beleaguered liberal living here in the belly of the conservative beast (Upstate SC) for many years, I’ve spent a lot of time the past few years thinking about “Otherness.” As a liberal, pagan, part Puerto Rican woman, I’m “the Other” here in these parts (physically, though, I look like my European-descended mom… my dad’s people are mixed race, but I’m not sure whether it’s African, indigenous American, or some combination of those two, and maybe some others as well.)
For me, “otherness” has never been defined by skin color or ethnicity–it’s all about attitude. Though I was reared by conservative Catholic parents, I grew up out west, mostly in Honolulu and San Francisco (Navy brat). I was ALWAYS around people who didn’t look like me, even within my own family, and it wasn’t a big deal to most people. In my class pictures from primary school, especially, I was often the only pale, blonde kid in the class. However, I have experienced prejudice coming from my own Puerto Rican grandmother. For example, she used to call me “gringa,” and not as a term of endearment. She also labeled me “fea” and used me like Cinderella, while labeling my darker-skinned sisters “linda” and treating them like princesses.
My point is, you never know about people. If you were to judge me only by looks, you’d think I was “The Other,” when in fact we are “tribe,” as far as I am concerned. Many people where I live are quite surprised and not overly bothered when I reveal my “Otherness” to them, though I don’t tell many people I’m pagan–that’s enough to put my pets in physical danger.
Genevieve,
So true!!(“..looking at the darker areas of this country and bringing them to light…”)
I picked up a new book from the library yesterday, “Unstuck” by James S. Gordon, MD.
It’s basis is “depression” — I for one am still working at rising above “clinical depression” after losing everything EXCEPT my children in a vicious divorce. I do believe that this subject speaks to us all – and from what I can see Dr. Gordon doesn’t just say, “hey we’re all depressed” – he offers alternative (unmedicated) opportunity to understand this situation/condition and from a mainstream perspective (which means more people may listen).
My children have a father (Taurus) who’s adaptive parents were the (orphaned) children of the holocaust. My children have a mother (Pisces – but hey! Leo rising and Aries moon, OK?) who is the product of two protestant ministers and Detroit’s race riots – and as a free-spirited artist would certainly have been a “hippy” if not a tad too young. My children both survived a terrorist attack on their summer camp nine years ago. My children – until eight years ago – were living the American Dream.
There is no question that dream sequed in an American Nightmare – and it isn’t over yet – for them personally or for our country. But they are testiment to a generation that gets it all differently. They’ve a lot to rise above (and a lot more shit being created in the meantime) but I learn from them everyday in terms of renewed perspective.
“WHAT DID IT TAKE FOR THOSE SOLDIERS TO BE ABLE TO MURDER VICTIM AFTER VICTIM? What of their HUMANity did they have to cast aside in order to do ther job for the people and country they loved? How sick it all is.
It is (well past) time to begin the recovery process.”
awordedgewise:
I think they needed to suspend their belief in the humanity of those they were killing.
Its a system not unlike the one used in Rwanda against the Tutsis by the Hutus. The Hutus were made to believe they had the moral imperative over the existence of the Tutsis, regarding them as inferior and therefore providing justification for their removal.
I’m sure Eric would have more to add to it, given his beautiful and exhaustive work on Auschwitz. The compartmentalization of one’s own humanity begins with the belief in the lies that separate you from another. Then you become focused solely on your tribe’s/family’s/self’s survival. When you isolate yourself from relationship with the world, a world of trouble begins.
“We start by looking at the darker areas of this country and bringing them to light. Until then, every complaint seen about being powerless before the powers-that-be is, in my opinion, giving up power.”
Fe:
I couldn’t have said it better. The first step towards empowerment is accepting responsibility for yourself. To quote Anton LaVey: Do not complain about anything you need not subject yourself to.
g*
Yes, Fe. And thank you for asking.
Janes,
Don’t know where you were in SoCal but your experience is like one I’ve not heard of – although I hear far too much bigotry toward latinos in general. Of course, ONE mention of bigotry anywhere/anyone is one too many.
I grew up in the midwest and have lived (not visited; lived) in NYC, Wash DC, Seattle, Santa Fe and a few others – as well as “Jack Keroac-ing” around the US a bit —people and places are all different with different goods and bads.
Fearing to live one place and not another is the same as pointing to your neighbor when the Nazis knock. We forget to see the faces, as Eric has so personally pointed out again recently in his re-printing of the Concentration Camp stores.
AND don’t forget the other side of the coin when looking at those victims of the holocause — WHAT DID IT TAKE FOR THOSE SOLDIERS TO BE ABLE TO MURDER VICTIM AFTER VICTIM? What of their HUMANity did they have to cast aside in order to do ther job for the people and country they loved? How sick it all is.
It is (well past) time to begin the recovery process.
awordedgewise:
Please take care of yourself. Do you have a support network?
Janes:
I wonder that sometimes too–how the fuck does government do it? They have invisible cash?
Actually, I do know how government does it. Our current state relies on revenue projections to make budget plans, and that includes allocations to various programs that are sacrosanct.
You’re going to need a certain amount of money to keep the potholes from turning to sinkholes, you’re going to have to keep a number of firefighters paid or the whole ship goes up in smoke roughly around November, and you’ve got to have police to chase down speeders, arrest criminals and follow up on Amber Alerts.
Now when our revenue projections hit something out of the ordinary, like lets say a credit crisis, you have the Governator with hat in hand to the fed asking for a $7B loan. That’s because housing revenues are projected lower and no one knows where the cash is coming from. They do not want to re-up property taxes (were you around for Prop 13?) — that’s a sacred cow, so the blame naturally goes to—Mexicans.
Yes, its a logic train that defies conventional intelligence, but that’s the price we’ve paid for keeping our dumb ones even dumber. And yes, that’s cause your child is eating lunch off the sidewalk where a school should have a playground. And that’s because no one wants to ante up or prioritize so that real priorities, like your kid’s education, come first.
If you know the names of those with the wallets, please send them to me. There’s a special place in hell for folks who run off with the treasure of the public’s trust.
Fe,
Today asked to be a crying day; the father of my children threatened bodily harm yesterday not only toward myself, but toward my son. Domestic Violence runs deep in our culture, a fraternal twin to Racism. (Fear and Hate being the parents, wouldn’t you say?)
I fear the McCain’s of our Universe; I cry now at the photo of the AmericanMuslim mother. Methinks there is no fear greater for a mother than that of losing a child. And no Pain deeper than losing one because of Fear, Hatred and Rasicm.
But then, if not for those, would we – perhaps – be left with LOVE?
I moved to Southern California about five years ago. I moved back out a couple years later because I got another job, but I hated that place. I felt like I was getting saturated by something I’d find out later was going to kill me. It’s the biggest, ugliest strip mall in the world. Every building looked like it had been extruded out of plastic goo and was about to melt into the blacktops and shimmer away. There is no decent public *anything* there. The roads are bad, the schools are atrocious and I’ll just say my goodbyes to you right now if you’re ever planning to visit the county hospital.
I’d mention this every once in a while. I’d say, for example, that my son was not used to attending classes in corrugated shacks and eating his carrots and hummus on the ground in the one parking lot/playground/alfresco lunchroom the state provided. And do you know what people out there told me?
They said that the reason there was no public money was because * the Mexicans ate it*. The reason the state was broke was because the Mexicans were siphoning the state money for their filthy schemes of liberty,survival and industry. They were using up the highways the way your brother hogged the toothpaste, breathing the air in the public schools and this was what was making the money disappear. Educated people were saying this. Educated, *affluent* people who you’d assume had access to television and newspapers said this, and they kept saying it!
These people had to know that Gray Davis, Kenneth Lay and GWB apparently did their secret handshake under a full moon at the eighteenth hole and agreed to rob the treasury through exquisitely illegal energy scams. They had to know that still *another* 42 billion dollars just walked off one year, stuffed into at least hundreds of impeccably creased gray pinstripe trouser legs and that California is still cash poor from the Era of the Sweetheart Deal.
Right?
It wouldn’t surprise me at all if it were one day discovered that the State of California actually spent no money at all on public programs and had just redirected all the public money to six wallets in Sacramento through a series of invisible vacuum tubes. This seems to happen pretty often: state money is distributed at the beginning of the budget year into the county budgets. Counties charge their own taxes. Then, around the middle of the fiscal year the state budget turns around and starts robbing the county budgets because it ran out of money for drugs and payoffs and arms deals and nuke and diamond smuggling and proxy wars and whatever else they get up to up there.
And then when there are no books or computers for the public schools, no room left in the county jails, and no new highways being built, well, those same pinstripe suits calmly recount the night they saw Luis drinking their good whiskey right out of the bottle and looting the silver drawer. What they do *not* mention is that same moment Kenneth Lay was walking past with his incredible Cash to Antimatter Machine. Maybe they’re destroying the schools out there so one day no one will be able to do math.
~j
“gotta go deep, cause it’s been how it is for a long time – and even if now most people can put an вЂ?x’ on a paper or onto a computer (all the while knowing that the last two elections it hasn’t mattered who people voted for), the vast majority of decisions made in the name of – and with the resources of – the American people are made by an вЂ?elite’ who do not answer to those same people. Same as when it began.
When’s that going to change?”
fluidity:
As soon as we believe that we can change it. And that means we dig. It also means we educate and interest ourselves in the workings of government. It also means we demand transparency and accountability from those who make decisions in our name.
I’m not one for taking down a government wholesale. That would make me as unhinged as any radical out there. What I hope we DO have is a real partnership with government. I agree that the current model has become a real “gas guzzler” on that score, with more on the guzzling and less on the leading. But we need to keep pushing, and that includes any administration, including Obama’s to make us an active partner.
1) There’s too many means to keep public figures accountable. We need to have them working. That means a viable press that’s interested in reporting the truth, and continued citizen journalism to shine a flashlight where the bullshit is.
2) There’s far too much at stake right now for us to feign relinquishment of our responsibility as citizens. There’s a price to be paid in dollars and blood that’s already been paid. In Iraq. Under Katrina floodwaters, the fall of W-35 bridge in the Twin Cities, and for whatever can happen if by some stroke of stupid luck we are pressing the access codes to open up the missile silos and end time on planet earth.
We need to press on all the fronts, including educating our kids in civics and encouraging access to quality education for every member of society. We start by looking at the darker areas of this country and bringing them to light. Until then, every complaint seen about being powerless before the powers-that-be is, in my opinion, giving up power.
“… discredit what some of the founding fathers — at least the non-slave holding ones — would have rejoiced in. A fully participatory democracy with the gates open for all to participate.”
I would warn that it is not the Republicans doing something different from the ‘honorable’ founding fathers, it is simply more of the same: when they came up with this ‘democracy’ it was not women, not blacks, not natives, and not even poor white men – you had to be white, male and own property to participate in this ‘democracy’
So if it’s time for an exorcism, gotta go deep, cause it’s been how it is for a long time – and even if now most people can put an ‘x’ on a paper or onto a computer (all the while knowing that the last two elections it hasn’t mattered who people voted for), the vast majority of decisions made in the name of – and with the resources of – the American people are made by an ‘elite’ who do not answer to those same people. Same as when it began.
When’s that going to change?